Electronic Records Management

Many of Michigan State University’s official business and historical records are now created in digital form. The University Archives’ collections include born-digital electronic records and in some cases digitized (scanned) copies of paper, audio, and video originals.

Examples of electronic records that fall under the Archives’ collecting policy include:

Whether “born digital”—that is, created by a computer, such as a Microsoft Word file—or digitized, these records may be good candidates for transfer to the MSU Archives. In preparation for eventual transfer, we recommend following good practices in electronic records creation and maintenance. To learn how to transfer electronic records to the University Archives, see the Submit Electronic Records procedures.

Acceptable file formats include:

File Type

File Formats

Digital images and photographs

TIFF, JPG, JP2, PCT, PNG, PSD, BMP, GIF, TGA, AI, EPS, SVG

Spreadsheet files

XLS, XLSX

Web records

HTML

E-mail, including attachments

PST, MSG

Audio files

WAV, AIFF, MP3, WMA, AC3

Video files*

AVI**, MOV**, MPEG-4, WMV, FLV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, SWF

Text files

TXT, DOC, DOCX, ODF, ODT, WPD, RTF, PDF

Presentation files

PPT, PPTX

*Recommended codecs are: mpeg2, mpeg4, dv, mjpeg2000

** Preferred

For More InformationIf you think you have electronic records of official or historical value, or if you have any questions about MSU’s electronic records transfer, please contact the University Archives, (517) 355-2330 or archives@msu.edu.